Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
General material designation
- Textual records
- Records in electronic form (born-digital)
Parallel title
Other title information
Title statements of responsibility
Title notes
Level of description
Reference code
Edition area
Edition statement
Edition statement of responsibility
Class of material specific details area
Statement of scale (cartographic)
Statement of projection (cartographic)
Statement of coordinates (cartographic)
Statement of scale (architectural)
Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)
Dates of creation area
Date(s)
-
2002-2019 (Creation)
Physical description area
Physical description
10.6 GB of textual records (ca. 3500 news releases): pdf files
Publisher's series area
Title proper of publisher's series
Parallel titles of publisher's series
Other title information of publisher's series
Statement of responsibility relating to publisher's series
Numbering within publisher's series
Note on publisher's series
Archival description area
Name of creator
Custodial history
Scope and content
Sub-series consists of news releases created and disseminated online by Communications and Marketing and its predecessors. Media and Public Relations (as the department was then known) began posting university news releases on the SFU website in 2002, and by 2003 only the web version was retained as paper copies were discontinued. This sub-series consists of pdf copies of the web news releases. For the earlier paper records, see series 5-1; for the early years there is some duplication between paper and digital versions.
For the years up to and including part of 2011, only the text of the new releases survives, without formatting, photographs or links; from 2011 on, the pdf captures formatted text, images and links, though many of the links have become obsolete with the passage of time ("dead links"). For more information about the transfer process (and its effect on the form and content of the records), see the note below on Availability of other formats.
Notes area
Physical condition
Immediate source of acquisition
Arrangement
Releases are organized chronologically. Each year is treated as a file and each individual news release an item within it. No releases for the year 2003 survive. Most years from 2002-2010 include a small number of undated entries, appearing at the head of the item list. For these releases, all that survives is the title and year, and the pdf text is in fact blank. These were retained because the titles are themselves at least partially informative of certain events and can potentially be used to find other records relating to the events in other fonds.
Language of material
- English
- French
Script of material
Language and script note
A very small number of the releases are in French.
Location of originals
Availability of other formats
The records were created by the department on the university's web content management system. By 2019, when the Archives worked with Communications and Marketing on the transfer of the records, the content was distributed over several different servers. Releases from 2002-2011 were stored offline on a legacy server, while 2011-2019 releases were on the active web server (Adobe Experience Manager). Images appearing in the releases were sometimes stored separately on SFU Vault or on the department's Flickr account.
The Archives (Alex Garnett) created scripts to output each release as a separate pdf file, with a standardized cover page indicating how it was generated. For the earlier material stored offline, the script captured only the date and text of the release, and it redacted the telephone numbers of story contacts. In a small number of cases, the actual text of the release was missing, and the script could only extract a title and year (see note on Arrangement above). For the releases still online, the script captured the look and feel of the page, and it traced links to externally stored images to embed the image in the pdf file.
Restrictions on access
The records are open with no restrictions.
Terms governing use, reproduction, and publication
Copyright ownership in the web news releases is mixed.
All text was authored by SFU employees and belongs to SFU. The Archives provides access to these materials under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (CC BY-NC).
Many photographs included in the releases were also created by SFU. Some images, however, were originally represented via links to external sites and may have been created by third parties (e.g. the subject of the release) who retain copyright. Ownership in particular photographs must be assessed case-by-case.
For materials in which SFU does not own copyright, the Archives makes copies available for private study or research purposes under the fair dealing provisions of Canada's Copyright Act. Use for any other purpose may require the permission of the copyright owner. SFU Archives can assist researchers in attempting to identify copyright owners, but it is the user's responsibility to contact owners and secure any required permissions.
Finding aids
Generated finding aid
Associated materials
Accruals
Future accruals are expected.
Physical description
The total size (10.6 GB) includes originals, preservation copies and access copies.